CommentsCORRUPTION WATCH-Who should make the important decisions for society? Should we allow those folks who support themselves by robbing 7/11 stores to make the laws concerning armed robbery?
After homeowners have devoted their lives to creating nice residential neighborhoods, should I be able to buy a few houses in order to open boarding houses in their midst? After all, I can make more money by transforming a few large homes into individual eight to ten studio apartments and then renting them out to mentally ill people living on Section 8 vouchers. I will label the objecting homeowners “NIMBYs” after I am “nice” to my councilmember and the Mayor’s favorite charity. Those properties can then be spot re-zoned for boarding houses or Granny Flats or apartments or whatever else I want.
This democracy stuff is over-done. The rule should be that whenever I can benefit from a law, I should get to make the law. Here is how I propose to bring about this new era for Los Angeles. I shall do nothing to change the status quo. I have just described how Los Angeles already functions. The thieves will make the laws and the rest of us get to suffer the impact.
Who Voted for this Massive Corruptionism?
Who voted for more traffic congestion so LA now has the worst traffic congestion in the world?
Who voted to have the fewest parks of any major U.S. city?
Who voted to have water mains burst almost daily?
Who voted for the City to skim off money from the DWP fees so that each year the bills are higher and the service worse?
Who voted to have tens of billions of dollars in unfunded pension liabilities?
Who voted for the City to be insolvent – again?
Who voted to have the lowest ratio of police officers on the street to citizenry?
Who voted to have far too few paramedics so that people needlessly die?
Who voted to give CIM Group $17.4 million for its project at 5929 Sunset Boulevard after it broke the law?
Who voted to give almost $200 million to the private Grand Avenue project?
Who voted that none of the office towers on Bunker Hill had to pay property taxes?
Who voted to destroy over 22,000 rent controlled units, thereby creating a horrendous homeless problem? If none of the units had been demolished, there would be no homeless crisis. Yes, we would have some homeless since all major cities have some homeless, but we would not have the huge unmanageable problem, leaving tax payers with a multi-billion-dollar tax burden, while the developers walked off with 100% of the profits.
Corruptionism on Steroids
And here we go again. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas is upstaging the City’s Goniff-in-Chief Garcetti and is convening a closed door-secret meeting over the Amazon Second HG proposal.
“[Supervisor] Ridley-Thomas and LAEDC Chief Executive Bill Allen, invites regional leaders in L.A. County to a working group meeting Thursday to discuss a bid proposal for Amazon…The meeting – which was not disclosed publicly – will be held at real estate brokerage CBRE Group Inc.’s downtown headquarters.” -- LA Business Journal, September 13, 2017 http://bit.ly/2eVEj26
Forget about the Brown Act which requires the public’s business to be conducted in public. Worse than that, the public is forbidden to attend and the public was not even supposed to know. That practice, however, is business as usual in Los Angeles. Public votes are a sham at the LA City Council where 99.9% of the votes have been pre-determined behind closed doors.
Who is CBRE Group Inc.? CBRE Group, Inc. (NYSE:CBG) is the world's leading commercial real estate services and investment company. CBRE serves real estate investors and occupiers in more than 100 countries around the world.
CBRE Group along with politicos like Ridley-Thomas, Garcetti and members of the Los Angeles City Council stand to make ungodly fortunes if Amazon comes to Los Angeles -- no matter how horrible the consequences are for Angelenos. Within days of Amazon’s announcement, Los Angeles has already plunged full steam into corruption mode, shutting out the public so that a tiny, tiny percent of real estate developers can make gigantic fortunes while everyone else is told to shut up.
Yes, in Los Angeles, the Thieves Already Make the Laws
If you are a billionaire thief, you get to make all the laws so that you can make all the decisions in secret. The public was not even supposed to know, but it will make no difference even if we learn about the meeting. These fancy-schmancy wheeler dealers will agree to whatever billions in taxpayer subsidies Bezos is demanding. Then, they’ll trot out their BS reasons why we should increase our taxes in order to make them wealthier.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.